News

Following the launch of the European Union Global Diaspora Facility, Oleg Chirita, Head of Global Initiatives explores the potential of diaspora engagement for development, scrutinising the history, evidence and rationale of diaspora engagement for development and assessing how ICMPD can capitalise on its experience in diaspora engagement in this new global initiative.

Free movement of labour within the EU has led to unprecedented possibilities for EU citizens to improve their lives by moving to higher-income EU Member States. The consequences for Member States who are mostly origin countries have so far received little attention. Facing increasing challenges on their domestic labour markets, a number of EU Member States have started to develop policies in order to attract back citizens to the country.

On Wednesday 2nd October, ICMPD Director General, Michael Spindelegger, gave a key note speech at a conference entitled "Comprehensive Coordination of the Migration Process" which was held at the National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria.

The International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) gears up to publish its recommendations for the next five years addressed to EU decision-makers. Now is the time for leaders to press the reset button to break political gridlocks on EU migration policy, and come together through pragmatic implementation and innovative cooperation.

To mark World Day against Trafficking in Persons 2019, this ICMPD Expert Voice article puts the spotlight on a neglected and under-reported form of human trafficking in the context of mixed migration: trafficking for forced migrant smuggling. 

The best way to understand the situation on migration routes to Europe is to listen to people who have made the journey. Our latest research study, “The Strength to Carry On - Resilience and Vulnerability to Trafficking and Other Abuses among People Travelling along Migration Routes to Europe”, analyses people’s resilience and vulnerabilities to human trafficking and other abuses in this context. The research found that understanding factors of resilience can help to prevent trafficking, and that resilience can be boosted or compromised by migration policies and practices. 

The continued increase in the proportion of the world's population living in urban areas has placed cities at the forefront for managing migration and its current challenges. Cities are now key actors and partners of choice for regional and inter-regional dialogues on migration, and taking their priorities into account could be beneficial to the migration dialogues in several ways.

This article presents some of the findings from our in-depth, multi-country research project “Study on Trafficking Resilience and Vulnerability en route to Europe (STRIVE)”. The analysis of the research findings is still ongoing, however first results are ready to be shared. 

OFID – the OPEC Fund for International Development – yesterday hosted a roundtable at its Vienna headquarters to discuss policy options to address the interrelated challenges of development and displacement.

On 13-14 September 2018 the Austrian Ministry of Interior hosts a conference in Vienna under the auspices of its presidency of the Council of the European Union. The conference is dedicated to cooperation with third countries and is titled “Security and Migration – Promoting Partnership and Resilience”. It brings together home affairs ministers of EU member states and third countries as well as representatives of the relevant EU agencies and international organisations. 

When Nigerian migration is discussed in the European context – for example, at policy forums and research conferences, or in the media - a number of key issues are usually mentioned. These include: the experiences of Nigerian people transiting through Libya in order to reach Europe by sea; sex trafficking of Nigerian women by means of juju oaths; and the assumption of a widespread desire to migrate to Europe among the young and growing populations of the region. 

Afghanistan is second only to Syria in the number of refugees originating from within its borders in recent years. Officially, about 2.5 million refugees have left Afghanistan in the almost four decades of this country being marked by hostilities and terror. The unofficial figure for the number of people who have fled exceeds six million. The majority of them are currently in the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Iran as well as in Turkey. It is in this context that the first information centre for potential migrants was opened in Kabul, the Afghan capital, this week. 

In 2018, the Joint EU-ICMPD “Migration EU Expertise” (MIEUX) Initiative celebrates its 10th anniversary. MIEUX, as a veritable pioneering capacity development global Initiative, has tremendously evolved since its inception, becoming a remarkable EU peer-to-peer expert facility with worldwide recognition. MIEUX’s transformation resonates with the opportunities and challenges that the EU and its partner countries share and corresponds to the shifts in migration governance, discourses, policies and institutions all over the globe. The 2017 Annual Report reflects this evolution by illustrating how the programme contributes to enhancing migration governance, furthering EU strategic priorities, and acting as a catalyst for knowledge exchange between migration experts. To mark the launch of the 2017 Annual Report, Oleg Chirita, Programme Coordinator of Global Initiatives, shares ten lessons learnt and their significance for the future of capacity building in the field of migration. 

The approach of states to managing immigration and asylum relies to a significant extent on the assignment of categories to people entering from abroad. Yet many adults and children travelling along migration routes do not fit neatly into just one of these categories. A new ICMPD Working Paper examines the challenges, and some possible ways forward, in dealing with the nexus between asylum, migrant smuggling and human trafficking in mixed migration contexts.

The number of member states of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) has increased by one as of May 2018. Turkey has become the 17th state to join ICMPD, an international migration policy organisation founded 25 years ago with Headquarters in Vienna, Austria. ICMPD already enjoys long-lasting cooperation with Turkey and runs several projects and activities from its office in Ankara.